Lorain Contractor Builds City’s First Bomb Shelter – July 1951

Civil Defense has been a regular topic on this blog since its launching in 2009. 

Why do I find it interesting? Because I was born at the end of the 1950s and civil defense was still very much on the minds of Lorain’s citizens. 

I’ve mentioned many times how my parents came very close to building a fallout shelter in our backyard in collaboration with some neighbors.

Anyway, I’ve devoted many posts to civil defense as a topic, including (and most recently) a 1956 comic book featuring “Mr. Civil Defense” (with a cameo by Al Capp’s beloved Li’l Abner character); Lorain’s air raid signal test (May 1951) as well as a new civil defense siren (May 1954); Lorain’s Civil Defense tower that used to sit behind the old City Hall; a 1968 Emergency handbook; a 1961 Fallout Protection book; and two September 1961 articles about area fallout shelters (here and here).

Well, here’s another article about Lorain’s preparation for a nuclear attack. This one is pretty interesting, because it features Sam Pavlovich, a contractor who apparently built “Lorain’s first atom bomb shelter.” 

The article ran in the Lorain Journal back on July 2, 1951.

It’s interesting that the article points out that “The shelters are being built, not because customers have ordered them, but because Pavlovich thinks it is time someone took some precautions.”

How big was the shelter he was building at the time of the Journal article? The article notes, “Approximately five feet by 11, it has ample space to accommodate an average family, according to its designers.”

As for construction, Pavlovich was “insulating his bomb room with concrete on all sides, installing a steel door opening onto the basement and a steel-shielded window for ventilation. The window will serve as an exit, if necessary, in case the door is blocked by the ruins of the home collapsing into the basement.” A cheery thought indeed.

What’s really interesting is that the article provides an address for the home Pavlovich was working on at that time: 2112 W. 11th Street. According to the article, the shelter “lies under the front porch in order to get topside protection from the porch’s concrete floor.”

I wonder if the family living there now knows about the bit of Lorain history right under their front porch?